Publisher’s Note: The following article, published in the Jan. 7, 1927 edition of The News Messenger details a meeting in which the city council discusses arming police with machine guns. A portion of this article will be featured in the new book: “The Sesquicentennial: Cultivating 150 Years of History in Marshall and Lyon County.” Books can be ordered for $44.95 by calling The Independent or filling out the form included in an advertisement in today’s paper.

(Jan. 7) — Marshall is ready to take an active part in the fight against crime, according to opinions voiced by members of the city council at its meeting on Monday night. Preliminary plans were discussed for supplying local police officers with machine guns, high powered rifles, and riot guns, and the aldermen also voiced their approval of the recommendations made to the legislature by the Southern Minnesota Crime Prevention Association. This organization was formed at Owatonna last week by representatives of Southern Minnesota cities and went on to record as favoring restoration of capital punishment and the whipping post, establishment of a state constabulary, and merging of the pardon and parole boards. More than 100 officials, police chiefs, sheriffs and business and professional men from half a dozen counties unanimously adopted the report.Marshall Represented. Alderman F. A. Ohlsen, who represented Marshall at the Owatonna meeting, made his report Monday night and in the discussion that followed opinion was virtually unanimous that steps should be taken here to support the movement. Legislative help is merely a part of the program outlined for the group at Owatonna went on record as favoring larger and better trained local police forces, more modern equipment in the nature of machine guns and armored motor cars and extension of the county ranger movement. Within the next few months, a highly organized band of men, strongly armed will probably be formed in this community to cooperate with local officials in preventing robberies or in running down the criminals. Such a group was actually organized here a few years ago, but was never active because of lack of insurance protection. Again last year, there were considerable agitation here for a body of county rangers, but thus far no results have materialized. Conditions in southern Minnesota the last few months have reached the point, local officials feel, where steps must be taken to prevent robberies and shootings. They cited as a case in point the recent $28,000 bank robbery at Rochester, which resulted in the shooting of two policemen.

The Owatonna meeting was called to devise means of checking crime in the southern part of the state, which the past fall took a heavy toll in the form of robberies of creameries, county and city stores, farm houses, poultry houses and banks.